During the last years, due mainly to the widespread use of personal computers and the universal access of millions of users to the World Wide Web, “multimedia publishing” has veritably exploded. Due to the widespread penetration of CD-ROM drives an enormous amount of multimedia titles combining text, images and sounds, are now accessible to owners of personal computers. Interactive electronic services, video-on-demand, and the World Wide Web are providing access to an increasing offering of movies, shopping information, games, multimedia documents, electronic commerce and many other services. In this evolution, an incredible amount of hypermedia information is today accessible via the Internet on the World Wide Web.
Notwithstanding the restless progress in computer technology, electronic recording, processing and displaying of data, multimedia and the Web, the use of paper has not been reduced. In fact, today, most information that people continues to read and consult every day is hard-copied, printed or written information, not electronically stored and displayed information.
Even when the public's enthusiasm for new computer-based multimedia services has been seen by many analysts as a threat to the conventional forms of hard-copied publishing, particularly book publishing, the reality is that reading a book cannot be compared with reading electronic media. Even when many electronic systems attempt to replace paper by providing many advantages such as, for example, a better access to multimedia services, reading paper remains today preferable for most people, whether they are familiar with computers or not. It is difficult to foresee the replacement in the future, of paper books by electronic books (e-books) or the realization of a truly “paper-less” office.
People usually prefer to read and browse through paper catalogs, magazines, newspapers, maps and books by flipping through the pages and glancing at pictures and text. A collection of printed color photographs can be much easily and quickly browsed than a sequence of computer screens.
On publication entitled “The Last Book”, IBM Systems Journal, Vol 36, No. 3 Vol 36, No. 3-1997, by J. Jacobson, B. Comiskey, C. Turner, J. Albert, and P. Tsao of the MIT Media Laboratory, printed books and computer screens are compared in the following terms:                “A book represents a fundamentally different entity than a computer screen in that it is a physical embodiment of a large number of simultaneous high-resolution displays. When we turn the page, we do not lose the previous page. Through evolution the brain has developed a highly sophisticated spatial map. Persons familiar with a manual or textbook can find information that they are seeking with high specificity, as evidenced by their ability to remember whether something that was seen only briefly was on the right side or left side of a page, for instance. Furthermore their haptic connection with the brain's spatial map comprises a highly natural and effective interface, when such information is embodied on actual multiple physical pages.        Another aspect of embodying information on multiple, simultaneous pages is that of serendipity and comparison. We may leaf through a large volume of text and graphics, inserting a finger bookmark into those areas of greatest interest. Similarly, we may assemble a large body of similar matter in order to view elements in contrast to one another, such as might be done to determine which of a particular set of graphical designs is most satisfying”.        
For people, paper has many advantages; paper is portable, familiar and easily distributed; paper can be easily viewed, marked, or manipulated, and does not require energy source to display. The friendliness, usefulness and availability of hard-copy documents cannot be reproduced today with electronic documents.
However, the most important problem, of course, with printed books is that, traditionally, they cannot easily be changed, amended, updated nor completed.
To make additional information directly accessible from printed publications, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/841930 (IBM's reference FR9-2000-0022), entitled “Method and system for accessing interactive multimedia information or services by touching highlighted items on physical documents” discloses a system and method for selecting and accessing multimedia information and/or services located on a user workstation (or on one or a plurality of servers connected to a communication network) simply by touching with a finger, items (words, letters, symbols, pictures, icons, . . . ) that are electronically illuminated over the surface of a hard-copy document (or any other physical surface) by means of an opto-touch foil. The referenced system includes:                an opto-touch foil preferably transparent, placed by the user over (or under) the document (or a portion of said document). This opto-touch foil is used:                    to illuminate and highlight hyperlinked items over the surface of the physical document (or portion of this document), and            to read coordinates of these hyperlinked items,                        an user workstation for accessing and displaying the information and/or the service associated with the hyperlinked items.        
The hyperlinked items are identified by means of a luminous signal (or light spot) generated by the opto-touch foil. The opto-touch foil operates under the control of the user workstation. Illuminated items are selected by pressing the opto-touch foil. When the user selects an item among all illuminated items, the user workstation receives from the opto-touch foil a signal indicating the position of this selected item. The user workstation identifies and locates referring to a hyperlink table the information and/or the service associated with the position of the selected item. If the information and/or service is located in a remote server, a request is sent to this server. If the information and/or the service is stored in the user workstation, then this information and/or service is accessed locally.
The information and/or service is then retrieved and displayed on a separate display, but not over the document to which this information is related. Thus, even if the information associated with illuminated items is selected from the physical document, this information is shown to the user on a separate media, generally on the user's workstation display, but not over the same document. Thus, the user is forced to frequently to move his head and to change eyes focus, going forward and backwards from the physical document to the workstation display and vice versa. This process is detrimental for the best user's comfort, rest, and attention.
Using the same opto-touch foil, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/892399 (IBM's reference FR9-2000-0027), entitled “System and method for locating on a physical document items referenced in a electronic document”, discloses a method and system for using the same opto-touch foil for locating on a physical document items referenced in an electronic document. In a preferred embodiment, this invention enables to highlight on a paper map the geographic position of places referenced in a Web page.
Also, using opto-touch foils, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/923150 (IBM's reference FR9-2000-0039), entitled: “System and method for locating on a physical document items referenced in another physical document”, discloses a method and system for creating hyperlinks from items (e.g. words, pictures, foot notes, symbols, icons) on a first physical document to particular points on a second physical document (manuscript or printed document), for activating these hyperlinks simply by touching the first document, and for highlighting, by means of a light emitting source, the position of the items on the second document. In a preferred embodiment, the invention enables to highlight on a hard-copy map the geographic positions of places referenced in a hard-copy document.
These patent applications are limited to show the positions of items referenced on electronic or physical documents, as being simple light spots over paper maps.
The herein above cited reference, “The Last Book”, IBM Systems Journal, Jacobson et al., describes the possibility of what might be considered an “animated” book:                “Finally, a remark should be made about the changing entity of the book itself. A medieval religious book, for instance, is immediately identified from the thick, black, Gothic lettering invented during the time of Charlemagne. Similarly, the richly drawn first letter of the Beatus page or the poetic layout of almost any book typeset by the inventor of the modem portable book, Aldus Manutius, is easily identified . . . . Thus the book on Arabian horse genetics may have video clips showing the performance of certain classes of horses. The key is that the video clip resides, spatially mapped, to a particular page in a particular book sitting on our shelf. It has a particular spatial place where we know we can find it. Contrast this with the single monitor we now have on the desktop, through which all changeable images must come, and the idea of the animated manuscript is clear”.        
This is a quote from Dr. James Sheats, in the article entitled: “Introduction to Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)”, on the rolltronics.com Internet site:                “The effects of the electronics and photonics revolutions, enabled by the silicon-based transistor (and its incorporation into integrated circuits), fiber optics, and solid state lasers, are evident in almost every aspect of modem commerce. Yet, far from saturating the market, these devices are predicted to proliferate far beyond anything we have imagined so far. Whereas roughly 50% of households in the developed countries own one personal computer, industry leaders today predict that in the next decade or so we will all own dozens or even hundreds of computers (most of them embedded in information appliances), all of which will communicate with each other on a network similar to the Internet. We will not know where these computers are, nor will we care, as long as they carry out their functions.        In this new world of “pervasive computing” (a term coined by Joel Birnbaum of Hewlett-Packard Labs), in which most computing is carried out by distributed resources connected by a utility-like network, the user's awareness of a “computer” lies only in what he or she sees at the interface: the display and input devices. Displays, now considered a “peripheral,” will be the central object from the user's perspective, while the processor becomes peripheral. This vision, however, requires displays that are far different from the current cathode ray tubes and expensive (and slow) liquid crystals, since they must be numerous, compact, and portable. Today display technology is primitive compared to computing technology. Indeed, paper is the preferred medium, resulting in the opposite of the early vision of the “paperless office.”        
Therefore, today there is a need to provide users with new systems and methods for improving physical documents with information in the form of electronic graphics, images and/or text that could be displayed in context, over said physical documents.
The present invention discloses how new display technologies, such as those based on passive matrix, transparent, organic electroluminescence (EL) devices (TOLEDS) and EL polymers, that are broadly available today, can be integrated with other technologies, like touch-foil technologies, and can be used to transform fixed, static, hard-copy documents into dynamic, animated, changeable, sources of information.